As mentioned last week, the Simtopia team worked on taking the feedback received from the ETC Playtest to refine their experience and to develop upon interactions that would be meaningful for the players, especially when switching from the god scale view to first-person perspective.
The Simtopia team also invited the entire faculty at the ETC to their project room to make sure that they were moving towards a concrete direction and pinpointing the key areas that needed to be polished. Faculty members Mike Christel and Shirley Saldamarco try out the Vive experience and give detailed feedback on the design and how to improve the comfort and purpose of the experience for guests.
Simtopia received feedback now that the 3D building (God-Scale) view was nailed down, that it was time to delve deeper into the first-person perspective mode when guests embody the creatures. Therefore, Simtopia’s art team iterated upon their creature concepts to incorporate a fun look to them that also fit the constraints of design for the space station. The design team finished testing their locomotion patterns and moved towards building out the key interactions that Simtopia wanted to explore while programming set out to incorporate UI elements as well as AI development.
Here are some of the milestones that the team reached for the week:
- Design:
- Created the summary for all of the playtest information received
- Made a design for the lab system
- Created a general interaction graph
- Updated the design documentation
- Created design for the mode system
- Created designs for the mixer and the cabinets
- Art:
- Environment:
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- Create Lab module
- UV mapping for all assets
- Create texture for all lab assets
- Iterate on lab assets design
- Create environment assets for Lab
- Light up Lab module
- Fix and light Green Room module
- Organized asset structure in Unity
- Pass all environment assets to programmers
- Put together character and environment art to create visual mockups to see how the elements come together
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- Creatures:
- Created a brand new Robomon and rig
- Made a wing rig test animation for one of the Simimon
- Thought of concepts for the venti sized Simimon
- Environment:
- Programming:
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- Improved the 2 movement prototypes
- Implemented physical effects for 2 movement (acceleration)
- Integrated movement with our current prototype
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- Fixed some bugs (collision, unremovable base module, fade screen…)
- Integrated new modules (lab, green house)
- Rewrite the Input System
- Scrolling UI for modules
- New builds (1.7 & 1.8)
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- Sound:
- Fleshed out more of the sound required for the experience
See you next week as we iterate more upon this plan and begin our preparation for soft opening!